Bray, Berkshire

Bray is a riverside village where you book dinner months ahead and the Thames, every so often, books the ground floor without asking. Its best-known figure is the vicar from the comic song, who switched his faith with every new monarch to keep his job, and in a parish this expensive that still reads as fairly sound financial planning. Hammer made horror films down the road at Bray Studios, though the most frightening thing in the village now is the bill for a tasting menu. Maidenhead supplies the station, the supermarket and the M4, and in return gets left off the envelope by people who would rather write Bray.